Keeping Score
by GadgetCid
Summary: From age 7 Dib has a friend named Cat that helped him in his fight againsed the Irken Invader Zim. Then Cat's life changes forever. Rated T for blood, possible death, and a few other things. Pos-poned
1. Awkward Meeting

Ok, here's a new fanfic that I've been planning. Note that I do not own Invader Zim or anything in the world of Invader Zim…Except for my own Voot Runner and Cat. Now that that's done, here's the brand NEW Invader Zim Fanfic…Well actually it the muliti-chapter prologue of my fanfic: "Keeping Score" is the title of the prologue and "For Her" will be the actual story. So with out further ado here's "Keeping Score",

Chapter 1

Awkward Meeting 

_5 years before Zim's arrival:_

"The house next door had finally been sold a few weeks ago, and emptied out just last week. The new family should be coming today." Said 7-year-old Dib to his 6-year-old sister Gaz. Gaz was watching the latest and newest commercial for "Bloatie's Pizza Hog" just shrugged. "So?" "So" Dib replied "This is also Dad's co-worker and collage friend Professor Taylor, He has a kid too!" Gaz, taking her gaze off of the T.V, glared at Dib. His little sister, Dib thought, was very scary and smart for her age. She already had the power to beet Dib up when ever she felt like it, and her appearance was scary as well, the skull-bow she had in her hair didn't help tone-down on the scary. While Dib, with his wide-eye glasses and scythe like hair, had an appearance of a boy who was friendless and had a harder time at home then making friends. Any good parent would try to spend as much time as possible with their kids to show that they cared. But then again, since when did their dad, world famous and praised Professor Membrane, care about them?

It was about 7 PM when Dib walked outside and on to the porch to wait for the new kid to arrive. _I hope I can actually make a friend this time,_ he thought to himself. He was always called _crazy_ because he believed that paranormal stuff was real. And when he was right, no one would believe him, when he did have evidence that he was right, it was taken out of his reach at the last second only to be questioned by his dad of "where is this evidence" and later to hear his dad's line of "My poor insane son" just as he walked out of the room. But this new kid, who too had a world famous Dad and about the same age as he was, might understand him, and maybe they'd have the same interests. But who was he kidding, that would be a 10000/1 shot of that ever being true.

His thoughts were interrupted as a large truck appeared in front of the next-door house. A small mini-van pulled up right behind it. A man, who wore the same attire as Dib's dad did (only with blond hair) got out of the car and opened up the passenger seat door. And out came…. A girl…. "Great" Dib muttered under his breath. "A girl, who can be friends with Gaz and pick on me at my paranormal studies." The girl had a brown newsboy hat on her head that covered most of her shoulder length carrot-red hair; her eyes from what Dib could tell at a distance, were china blue. But with out the glasses and with a much smaller head, she looked just like him. Her outfit even looked the same. He looked at her tug at her Dad's coat for a few seconds, just before tuning away. "She's probably going to ask him for a hug or something" he whispered. But just as he opened his house door a voice made him turn around, "CAT, FOR THE LAST TIME, THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS ALIENS!" Professor Taylor yelled at his daughter. Dib stared at the daughter for a few seconds. "Cat?" he said, "That's her name?". "But Dad there's an alien in the truck I swear! I saw it!" Cat said to her father. The professor took on a face of annoyance. "Cat, next door is my very good friend and co-worker, Professor Membrane. I don't want you acting…like you in front of him or his kids. If you act normal, you might make a friend. Then you wont just have your cat Dwiky to talk to when I'm gone at work." Cat was at the point of crying right then when she repeated "But Dad!" her father just turned his back on her and said as he entered the house "My poor insane daughter".

Dib just stood there on the porch. They hadn't noticed him. Dib stared at her for a few seconds. She was just like him. Only worse, he at least had someone to talk to, if you count Gaz as someone to talk to. And he had been living his whole life here, this was a kid who just moved into the city, and had no brothers or sisters, or even a mom. For the first time in Dib's life, Dib found someone who was a lot worse off then he was. "Insane?" he whispered into the air, remembering Professor Taylor's words. Cat's gaze finally met his, apparently she had heard him this time, Cat looked on the verge of crying. She turned around and ran into the street, suddenly tripping over. Dib went over to help her up when a car started to speed towards her. Dib ran forward and tackled Cat. They both rolled on to the sidewalk as the car suddenly to a halt. And a furious driver stuck his head out of the window. "HEY STUPID KIDS, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD?" The car suddenly raced on just as suddenly as it stopped. Dib was on top of Cat still as the car left. Both of them just stared at each other. Both of them had the same thing going through their head as their faces blushed to a dark red. "This is awkward".

Yeah, it's a short chappy compared to how long I'm going to write others. See ya as soon as I get 5 reviewers!


	2. The Transmission

**Ok, this is going out 3 reviews early especially for Invader-Katz. You rock dude. Ok, so here is the next chappy, I promise this one will be longer. **

_**Chapter 2: The Transmission**_ "Both of them had the same thing going through their head as their faces blushed to a dark red. "This is awkward"."   
They stared at each other for a few more seconds before Cat broke the awkward silence. "Ummmm, can you get off of me?" "Uhh. Sure" Dib replied. He got himself on his feet and extended a hand to help the 7-year-old girl up. As her hand touched his, he suddenly never wanted to let go. He wanted to keep her hand in his forever. Until the world's end. She looked into his eyes with an expression of amazement and wonder. As if she felt the same way too. As she pulled on his hand, he saw her china blue eyes and her lips getting closer to- 

"DIB WAKE UP!" a sudden voice from nowhere screamed. The moment around him dissolved at once and his feelings turned to surprise. He yelled and jolted from his position, and 12-year-old Dib sprang from his bed and nearly fell out of his window. A hand grabbed his arm and yanked him back on to his bed. "I'M SORRY, I DIDN'T KNOW THAT SODA WAS YOURS!" Dib opened his eyes bracing himself for Gaz's gaze of death. But instead was face to face with, not his sister, but his best friend Cat. Cat looked just like she did 4 and a-half years ago on the evening when they first met. Her china blue eyes were still blue, Her hair was the same length but the red color of her hair now resembled that of a rose in bloom, and her gaze was still the thing Dib always dreamed of. But why was he able to see her features so clearly now, when in the 4 years they've been partners in paranormal investigation, was he able to see her face like he did on that night? "Dib what are you- oh by the way, the score of me saving your life is now Cat: 14 Dib: 13. But anyway, we HAVE to get back on the roof Dib!" Cat hastily told Dib. Then Dib realized why he could see her like that. Her brown newsboy hat, the one she never took off unless she had REALLY big news, was off her head. Dib's eyes widened. If she had been on the roof, she had been listening to his satellite transmitter. And if she had big news, there was only one conclusion…

She had heard _them…_

The two paranormal investigators raced up the stairs of the Membrane home and on to the roof where a satellite connected to a laptop with headphones was making beeping sounds. Dib dived for the headphones and yanked the cord so that the sound could flow from the speakers in the laptop. This was it; this was the proof they needed. Cat was surly recording this on the laptop and now they were about to be the first people ever to hear a transmission from another world. Cat's face suddenly turned to anger. "Dib what are you doing? Don't you remember that the speakers on my laptop are busted?" she rushed forward to plug the headphones back in. They both put one ear on a separate speaker, desperately hoping that there was still someone there talking. But all they heard was "Curly fries". "NOOOOOO!" Dib yelled to the world. Their one and only chance to prove to the world that there was intelligent life on other planets, to prove that they were right, to prove they weren't crazy like everyone thought they were, was gone. Cat suddenly slapped Dib. "Cut it out." Cat said. "We only just missed the live broadcast, I used the D.S.A.R.P to record it." Dib's face changed from anguish to joy faster then a traffic light.

Cat was always tinkering with gadgets and devices. She knew how things worked so well that she had invented some things herself. Like the floating-video phone. Her father, Professor Taylor, kept saying to Dib's dad: "If she just gave up on the whole "craziness" she just might become the youngest Scientific Gadget Engineer." But Cat hated having to come up with useless inventions that everyone else found entertaining. She was forced to invent the first ever episode of "The Scary Monkey Show" by using a monkey with a stall-chip in its brain. After she filmed the first episode, all people had to do was keep showing the same episode and people never knew the difference. But she loved to use her inventing skills for her and Dib's paranormal research. This just happened to be a Deep Space Audio-Recording Program. "Let's hear it!" Dib said eagerly as he put the headphones back on his head. Only to have Cat yank them off 3 seconds later. "I'm downloading the broadcast to my computer. The whole thing won't be ready for a while. " Dib's face fell a little. "But" She continued, "We can listen to the last minute of it. Maybe the words "Curly Fries" will make since this time." Cat sat down next to Dib, plugged in an extender pack, put two headphone cords into the extender and they put the headphones over their heads. Cat clicked the "Play" button and a voice began to fill their minds.

"We will send you to a planet, soooo secret." Begin an annoying yet powerful voice "No one has ever heard of it" Dib glanced at Cat. Vice versa.

"Right" said another more annoying yet equally powerful voice "And those who have heard of it. Dare not speak its name."

"What's its name?" said the third voice that suddenly pounded on their ears. But this voice was different. It wasn't powerful, but who ever said it, was odiously an egomaniac. Dib could tell by the proud ness in whatever-this-thing-was voice. But after this, Cat took off her earphones and felt a wave of confusion wash over her. Even Dib could feel it. He could see by the sweat on her face that something about this voice frightened her. "Cat?" he said to her. She turned to him. Her face, this time, wasn't full of wonder and amazement, but mix of confusion and strain. As if she was trying to remember something. Or someone. "I've heard that voice somewhere before." She quivered. Her voice frighten with fear. Dib hadn't seen her like this since her father wanted her to go to the hospital for a job interview for the tech repair crew. Cat hated hospitals for some reason. Dib never figured out why and when ever he asked her she'd always say, "They keep blood in refrigerators. Isn't' that enough to make anyone feel sick?" Dib's attention turned back to the recording when the annoyingly powerful person said something about lasers.

"The universe will be ours for the taking" it said, "It's only a mater of time before all the races of the universe serve the Irken Empire. I'll have a serving of curly fries."

"They're coming!" Dib said to Cat. Cat stared at him with worry. Then, as if she knew that her duty to earth was beginning, she put on her newsboy hat and followed Dib to the Membrane's kitchen- Via- drainpipe. Only to almost land in a water filled sink. Instead, Cat hung on to the pipe and carefully got on to the counter. Where Cat, who took a proud pose, announced, "They're coming! And we've got proof!" Only to remember that both Mr. Membrane and her father were out at the lab tonight. She looked at Dib, who had just climbed out of the sink-dripping wet. "Now what?" Dib asked his paranormal partner. "I guess we go back up and wait for it to be downloaded to the disk. Then we'll send it to the Swollen Eyeball Net." They clamored back on the roof, expecting the disk to be out and fully downloaded.

But as Cat looked at the screen, a mask of sheerer horror was plastered on her face. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" She screamed. "What?" Dib asked, "What's wrong?" he asked as he took a look at the monitor. The screen had a warning notice on it that said, "Downloaded file to disk" He couldn't figure out why Cat was flipping out. Then he saw it. The disk drive was open. And the disk was gone. Both of them stood there in shock for a good ten minutes until the monitor suddenly flashed and there attention was pulled toward it. The screen flashed from normal, to an odd sign with odd shapes and symbols floating behind it. The sign looked like an alien. Cat stepped back about a foot. Then a count down appeared on the screen. "RUN AWAY!" Both of the kids yelled as they ran from the self-destructing laptop. Just as they were about 5 feet from it, it burst into a million pieces. After the smoke cleared, all that was left was the satellite dish and a big scorch mark where the laptop had been. Dib look at Cat. Her eyes were big and fearfully. She turned to him and in a hushed voice said "Something tells me that we're going in way over our heads"

**And that's the 2nd chappy! I told you the other chappys would be longer and better! Please read, review, and stay tuned!**


	3. The Nightmare Begins

**ON TO CHAPPY 3! Note: I do NOT own Invader Zim or the characters. The only thing I own is Cat and the deference she makes in the stories created by J.V, the creator of I.Z. And I do not own the brief quote that Cat states to Zim for the first time. That quote belongs to Monty Python.**

* * *

**_The Nightmare Begins_**

Dib and Cat trudged to school the morning 6 months after the proof of intelligent life in the universe had mysteriously vanished leaving a laptop to self-destruct on the roof. They both tried to convince their fathers that they HAD the proof, but it was stolen. But when they got to the part where Cat's laptop exploded…. Needless to say, Professor Taylor, Cat's dad, was not happy with her laptop gone. Nether was Professor Membrane about the scorch-mark on the roof. To paraphrase: They were both grounded for a month.

That gave them plenty of time to think of what happened to the disk and the laptop. When they both got out of being grounded, they pooled their theories together to make only 3 possibilities of what happened while they were gone

#1 Gaz took the disk, used "paint" program to make a weird alien symbol, and poured soda on the laptop knowing it would blow up, just to mess with them.

#2 In a bazaar chain reaction of some sort something happened that made the disk get out of the drive and smashed somewhere, and the laptop to have an exact sequence of keys inserted that would make it create a virus to make the laptop explode before shaping out what the virus would look like in a non-binary code. (They saw some sort of debris from their windows after they were grounded)

Or

#3 Alien Activity

They talk to Gaz, (Well Cat talked to Gaz. Dib was too afraid and Gaz's wrath was only seconded rate to Cat's furry) to find that Gaz was getting her "Game Slave" that night. And after much detective work that took over 3 weeks to figure out, the second option was null. Cat looked at the situation and realized that if this race that they heard and recorded was involved, they wouldn't be sending someone over, someone would already be here. And with the Swollen Eyeballs spread out all over the globe collecting info on any alien activity, Cat was cretin (and much to her dismay) that aliens weren't involved. But with careful and practical analysis of the remains of Cat's laptop, it was no doubt about it

Someone didn't want them to interfere with whatever was going to happen.

Which (odiously) made them interfere even more. They spent night after night trying to figure out who did it, collecting every bit of info on their enemies: people who wouldn't want them to succeed in proving that they weren't crazy, or people who were against the Swollen Eyeballs.

The news of the organization had leaked when Dib helped Cat join the S.E's (as she called them) as GadgetCid. (Authors note**:…yep that's me!**) Gaz had been listening outside Dib's door to the welcoming ceremony for Cat and gave info to her Dad who told his teem of "Fellow Scientists" who leaked it to the world that eventually got onto "Mysterious Mysteries".

When Cat found out that Gaz practically used her to get at Dib, There was a HUGE fight that caused half the city to explode. After downtown finally started cooling off, rescue teams went into the city to find Gaz, bruised, burned and shaking in a corner while Cat stood tall, not a scratch on her. Gaz may have not hurt her physically, but using Cat to find out about the organization put a heavy toll on Cat's mind for a few days. But she quickly recovered when she found out that the organization had called her a hero for standing up to Gaz and beating her. From the stories they heard from Dib, she was classified as "The Devil Incarnate."

But the damage was done. Because of Gaz, information of the work of the organization made people think that they were a bunch of crazy people who should be locked up, so the government had been confiscating the work of possible members of this "Crazy Organization" as people called it. And if they were caught doing something "Crazy", an Adult would get locked up. But Cat and Dib were lucky, they were young and were "going though a stage", as there fathers put it, so they kept getting off. As long as the police guy got tickets to the next "Science with Professor Membrane and Professor Taylor" and a signed autograph with the person who created "The Angry Monkey Show".

The point was, they had a lot of people who would love to see them locked up.

* * *

Dib and Cat got to the school at last and walked through the halls filled with the usual stairs and whispers. But today was different…kids weren't whispering about them…they were whispering about someone else.

Dib looked at the amount of concentration on Cat's face. She must have been trying to listen to the new gossip. She must have heard something interesting. Maybe something about Zita plotting something against Cat (She wanted to get back at her for throwing a mashed potato ball at her in 4th grade. Why Cat did it in the first place, he didn't know and he really didn't care)

Cat suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Dib looked back at her with concern. She bore a wide-eye stare on her face. "Cat?" Dib said, "What did you hear?"

"OH MY GOD!" Cat yelled, making everyone within a 10-foot radius jump. Cat began to run after something that had just gone around the corner.

Dib had only caught a glimpse of it, but it looked like a boy. And he was green. Dib started to run behind her but it was hard to keep up, "Don't worry Cat, I got your back!" he yelled after her. "No, just get to the class room! You can't be late again!" she yelled back while in a full sprint run. Dib came to a halt and watched her blurry figure turn another corner into the 6th grade wing. She was right, he couldn't be late again or else Ms Bitters would make him have detention. And after Gaz had stopped picking on him, the only thing worse then detention with Ms. Bitters was the end of the world.

Dib walked to the classroom to be greeted by whispers. He knew why. This was the first time he hadn't walked in with Cat. Dib sat down and waited for class to start. Thinking of the things he usually thought of to start his day. Mental pictures went through his mind, Him being called a hero, successfully bringing the S.E respect, Cat and him kissing- He jolted out of his daydreaming with a surprising yell as the bell rang. "Where did that come from?" He thought to himself.

He looked at Cat's desk. Empty. She was late for the first time; she was never late, EVER. This would not go well. Something big must have happened. Ms. Bitters glided up to the front of the class from her desk. Dib sank into his chair, "here comes the 'we're all doomed' speech again" he whispered.

"Class" Croaked the scary teacher "Let's us greet the newest, and most hopeless addition to the student body." Dib sat up and starred at the boy beside her. He had a look of smugness on his face. He would call it a boy if it WEREN'T AN ALIEN!

Even if it had normal looking human eyes and black hair, Dib could tell they were fake. Its skin was green and didn't seem to have the natural oils that humans had. It had a purple sort of outfit that looked like a cross between armor and a uniform…like a battle suit… It was also wearing a kind of backpack that had 3 circles on it and he was sure that it was faintly humming.

Hey, wait a minute. Hadn't he seen that type of backpack before?

"His name is" Ms. Bitters continued, but at that moment the classroom door slammed open, "ZIM!" yelled a very flustered and tiered looking Cat. "Yes, yes… I AM ZIM!!!" yelled the alien that Cat was glaring at. Dib's mouth dropped. The voice that belonged to 'Zim' was the exact voice Cat and he had heard on the transmission.

"YOU'RE A LOONY!" Cat screamed back at Zim. Zim's proud face flushed as everyone started laughing at him. Zim looked back at Cat who had taken her seat next to Dib. They both glared at each other (Authors note: **CUE THE LITTLE "EVERYTHING IN THE SCREEN IS CUT OUT EXCEPT THE EYES" CUT**). And the class' laughter suddenly died. Everyone could feel the tension in the room as sparks flew from the two's gaze. Inside Dib suddenly felt one thought rise to his mind, though he had no idea what it meant.

And so it begins…

**

* * *

**

**And that's chappy 3 for ya, Special thanx to Invader-Katz for the AWSOME pic of Cat, thank you so much! Read and review plz!!!**


	4. Taking Action

Wow, Wicked long time. Sorry everybody! I've been busy as of late! Here's chapter 4! Note that I do not own Invader Zim, or the characters (other then Cat, her dad, and her cat) or most of the story out-line. They all belong to the cartoon genius J.V. I do not own certain quotes ether. But I won't tell you who said that. BUT the person who does guess will get a walk-on roll in the next chapter! THE QUOTE WILL BE IN BOLD AND ITALIC! Just to let ya all know. Oh, before I forget, the ITALIC words are people talking but the voice is not suppose to be in the flashback. It's the person talking about the flashback and we're just reading how it looked. THE WORDS IN ITALIC DURING THE LAST FLASHBACK ARE NOT APART OF THE MEMORIE! There is also a high FLASHBACK warning for this chapter. NOW enough of my chitchat. Here's the long overdue chapter 4!

**_Chapter 4 _**

**_Taking Action_**

The tension increased as Cat stepped up to Zim. His anger decreased to bier the look of Zita facing Bitters. Cat was now right in front of Zim, and with them facing each other, Dib noticed some things.

They were both the same height, (Cat had never been very tall but she was still growing) they both had something over there heads (Cat's wiry like hair was covered by the hat, while Zim (Dib was sure) was wearing a wig to hide the wiry antennas) and they both had the exact same look on there faces. Except Cat didn't have the zipper like teeth like Zim had. If Zim wasn't an alien, people would think that they were siblings.

Cat held out her hand, palm facing the ceiling. "FORK IT OVER!" she yelled. Zim sheepishly looked at Cat before reaching into his pack (With out taking it off) and pulled out a shoe. It looked just like Cat's. Then Dib realized that it was Cat's. "You stole her shoe?" Zita blurted "Is that why she was late?" "SCILENCE!" yelled Miss. Bitters. Everyone cowered in their seats. But to everyone's surprise (including Bitters) Zim and Cat were still up at the front. Their faces in confusion and wonder as they both held that shoe. And they stood there for a long time.

**

* * *

****LATER**

Cat and Dib followed Zim's shadow after the last bell rang, keeping the conversation between them at a low. "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" Cat yelled/whispered to Dib. "I was thinking of revealing the ali-" but Cat cut Dib off and indicated finger towards Zim and pressed a finger to her lips. "Shhh!" she said, "I'll explain later, but first, how many times do I have to tell you?" Dib sighed "Give the enemy or others no indication of what you are doing/thinking. It could mean the difference between success and failure." He repeated. "If you jump to conclusions or reveal what you're doing to your enemies, they can plan out a way to make you fail. The best strategy is silence." She repeated to Dib. "I had a plan planed out. Then you had to go and do that! I've never been so furious in my life!"

"Except for that one time with that frog." He reminded her. "Hey if Chuck Jones had a bad time with his experience with it, so does everyone else! And I told you never to repeat that!"

"Hey it's pretty memorable to think that you found the singing dancing frog in that cartoon."

"SHUT IT!" She yelled then quickly stopped in her tracks. So did Zim. Cat and Dib dashed back around the corner as Zim turned around to see who yelled. Cat stared angrily at Dib. "If you want to help me with this, follow him, don't make a scene, stay hidden, just find out where he lives, I have to go home right away."

"Why?"

"One: I have to do something for my dad, Two: I can't chase him anyway, he knows me too well, Three: I CAN'T RUN."

"Why?"

Cat lifted her foot up to show Dib the bottom of her shoe. There was a hole in it, a big one, and it looked like Cat's foot had been bandaged up.

"What the-?" Dib began to ask, but Cat covered his mouth. "I'll…Explain…Later." She stated. Then she quickly whipped around the corner, past Zim and out of sight. Zim seemed to notice this, he stopped and waited on the school steps. "Does he know I'm here?" Dib asked himself.

Cat ran…Cat limped home as fast as she could. "Today is dad's day off" she said to herself in heaving pants. "I'm gonna need some help with my foot."

**

* * *

****FLASHBACK**

"No, just get to the class room! You can't be late again!" Cat screamed back at Dib as she whipped into the 6th grade wing. The green kid was smart, he led her to a wing full of kids. Easy to loose someone in here. IF only he didn't stick out like a sore thumb. "THERE YOU ARE!" Cat yelled through the noise of the other students, who took no notice in her or the new kid's actions. Cat plowed through the crowed, using her backpack like Goofy used his shield in Kingdom Hearts. Zim jumped out the window and started to run across the street with Cat hot in pursuit. After a few blocks he went down an alleyway near the Membrain labs, only to be clocked by a fence. "No human fence can stop ZIM!" he announced as the spider legs came out of his PAK and lifted Zim over the fence before returning them to his PAK, allowing him to take off in flight.

Cat was lucky enough to see this, but was stunned as she approached the fence at all haste. "What technology!" she considered "if only he wasn't evil" Cat stopped at the fence and clicked the heals of her blue shoes together twice, "Switch to magnet-mode" she ordered. Her shoes turned a stunning purplish-red. Cat lifted her foot up and placed it on the metallic wall. She then started to run ON THE WALL and over the fence.

Zim meanwhile was almost cretin he lost the girl with the hat. "VICTORY!" he shouted "You really need to stop yelling at no one." Zim turned around but could see no one. He took out his spider legs again and raised himself up "AGG!" he yelled "How could she have followed me?! ZIM!" he turned around so he could run away. But at about half turn he met a face "Boo" "AGG!" Zims' spider-legs toppled over and one cracked. The girl giggled as she stood…ON THE WALL. Zim looked at his opponent for the first time.

Humans would have called her "Mysterious Beauty", if it weren't for that ugly hat. Underneath he saw the 'hair' (has humans called the unfeeling mass of antennas that most had on their head) looked like the shade of the red that the Irken symbol usually was. Her oily skin was not as oily as most humans he had seen that day, in fact, she looked almost UNHEALTHY for her planet's standards. But her eyes that were the color of the crystals on Planet Regigi, the power core harvesting planet. They were the obsession of the Irken race.

He stood there as she stood on the wall, facing down at him with the utmost disgust. "How are you…" Zim started, then he spied her shoes. "Ah, 'Magneto-trackers' ."

"No you idiot they're MY invention!"

"An inventor? At your age? Are you Irken?" Zim replied

"NO!" Cat said "I'm a paranormal Investigator, the exact opposite of what YOU are. So don't you DARE think that ever again!"

She leaped off of the wall and started swinging punches at Zim. Zim avoided her, he did master PAK-less evasion at the training planet. But only lesser Irkens were able to do that. Cat finally got a hold on his neck and pushed him up aginzed the wall. "Listen Zim, I don't care whether or not you're trying to gain honor to your 'Tallest' , you're going down!" "You…Know?…How?" Zim yelled at Cat, "I heard the transmission…Ok I didn't hear it, but my friend filled me in." "Friend?" Zim said with a curious look. Cat's grip loosen. "You….Don't know what a friend is do you?" Zim shook his head. Then Cat slowly took him off the wall. "Good" Zim thought "She was crushing my PAK."

Suddenly, his curiosity melted, he had an opportunity, and he'd worry about 'friend' later. His spider-legs burst open, Cat was flung into the air and landed in a heap on the ground. Zim ran back to the fence with Cat on the wall again. Zim passed over on top of the fence and as Cat leaped from the wall and motioned into a Karate Kick, Zim's broken Spider-leg flung out to Cat's foot and struck thought the shoe and into her foot. Cat stopped short and fell to the ground, still behind the fence, unconchess, her foot was bleeding badly as Zim looked at her shoe on his Spider-leg.

**END FLASHBACK**

* * *

Cat finished her tale to Dib in her room, her foot in a splint and Dib's hair in a mess. "When I came to I was in front of the skool, my foot was bandaged a bit. But it still hurt, rather then go to the nurses office, where they'd just make it worse, I went to class. I PLANED to try and be-friend Zim. But then you had to ruin it!" She yelled at Dib "How was that suppose to help?" Dib asked her "You already told him that you're a Paranormal Investigation and NOW he knows that you're an inventor. How is he suppose to trust you?" Cat looked stunned then she slapped her forehead. "I forgot about that!" she paused…then "But at least it's better then trying to expose him in class THEN chasing him through the city!"

"YOU ALREADY DID THAT! WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME! "

"BECAUSE OF THAT DISPLAY IN CLASS, YOU LOOKED LIKE A MORRON! NOW EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT I'M DOING!"

"CAT, WE ALL FORGET! BUT IF WE KEEP ARGUING LIKE THIS INSTEAD OF WORKING TOGETHER, HOW CAN THE EARTH STAND A CHANCE?"

Cat's glare faded away. Her shoulders sunk and she sighed. "I'm sorry Dib…I've just been stressed out today. It's the medicine Dad gave me for my foot." She indicated to the foot that was in a splint. "Oh yeah, how did that go with your Dad? What happened?" Dib asked. Cat sighed again. "I'll…tell you another day." She said. Dib looked confused. "Normally I'd tell you." She began. "But that's only because I've had time to think about it and collect data. Then after I think of all possible answers I cross out what's not possible. Usually it takes me only a few hours. But this is my Dad this time. And I don't even know anything about him. Only his name and who he is in general. Don't you think it'll take a toll on my mind to discover something about my dad that is heartbreaking? If it is…" Dib stared at her in wonder "Why don't you tell me your ideas now?" he asked. "No" she replied "Like someone once said '_**It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment**_.'" Dib looked crest fallen, he felt that way too. "But I can tell you this." Dib looked up at Cat, "He's hiding something. Something HUGE."

**

* * *

****MEANWHILE **

Zim paced the computer room of his base, finishing his tale to the Purple and Red Tallest on the screen. His first report was somewhat…Amusing to the Tallest. It started out boring, then it got good at the part where Zim got hurt. But Zim seemed to be reporting more about a certain human female and the adventure in the alleyway. Zim even stated his theories here and there. It was almost like a speech. Zim had stopped talking and faced his superiors. Purple had and enthusiastic look on his face, like he was seeing a movie (he had donuts to complete his day). But Red had a glare stuck to his face, he was trying to soak all this information. "And what happened after the female fell?" Red interior gated. Zim lowered his gaze. "Zim" Red ordered "Purple can't contain his excitement for long" he gestured to his fellow Tallest who was on the verge of a seizure and sugar rush. Zim looked back up. "What happened?" Red asked again. Zim gulped "Well…."

**

* * *

****FLASHBACK** (Author's note: LAST ONE! PROMISS!) 

"_I didn't know what came over me. As I said before, this planet is the strangest in the galaxy. Races fight over simple maters, people kill each other for no reason and they actually have emotions over something other then themselves."_

Cat laid on the ground, bleeding out of the hole in her foot. She was turning paler.

"_I had every intention of leaving her there but…"_

Zim looked back at Cat over the fence. A wave of something new fell over him. Slowly but quietly.

"_I suddenly had this emotion."_

Zim became confused. He was feeling something towards this girl. But Irken's weren't suppose to have any emotions other then for themselves. It was the way it had always been. But what was this feeling?

**TEMPORARY FLASHBACK END**

* * *

"…Pity" Purple dropped his box of donuts and Red tilted his head with eyes as big as donuts. "I felt pity towards this girl."**

* * *

****FLASHBACK CONTINUES**

Zim pushed the curiosity back. But instead of it going away it grew, and grew, and grew. Until suddenly he felt something. He clutched his chest and breathed heavily.

"_I suddenly heard something right here" he pointed towards the center of his torso. "A voice, telling me how to get this feeling away from me. The request was unheard of. But I couldn't bear the feeling or the voice. So I did the only thing I could to make it stop."_

Zim took out his Spider-legs, hopped off the fence, and picked Cat off the blood stained ground.

"_I…Helped her"_

**END FLASHBACK**

* * *

Purple went off into a seizure of mouth foaming proportions and into a dead faint, Red's mouth slacked and his eye began to twitch, along with everyone else in the control room.

Zim continued to look at his feet. "So I cleaned off the red stuff called 'blood' that was coming out. But it kept coming and she was getting paler. So I took a big white thing from a window, tore some off and wrapped her foot up." Zim cut off there and Red got his attitude back. "Was that the whole story Zim?" "Alright, I used some Irken equipment to seal up that hole in her foot, I couldn't fix up the nerves though, so I took her to the skool were people were and left her on the steps." He said quickly "By the time I got to the class those feelings were gone." "But they came back when you gave her shoe back and when that other kid was trying to expose you?" Purple blurted as he started to get up. Zim nodded. Purple and Red turned around to discuss something, then,

"Ok Zim, here's the deal, normally Irkens aren't suppose to have that flaw, but you've never shown any feelings towards others except us, but this planet obviously does something to Irkens" Purple said in a serious voice. "Wait" Zim thought "Purple sounding serious? About my mission?" "Ether that or it's this girl…CAT…" Red added. "Can you send us a hologram of this girl?" "Certainly" Zim said, about to take off his PAK so he could attach it to the computer.

"NO Zim attach it while you're still wearing it!" Purple yelled. "But that'll electrocute me! ME!" Zim argued "No he's right" Red told Purple "We need him too much for him to chance death over your request." "THEY NEED ME!" Zim thought joyfully to himself as he stuck his PAK into the hole in his computer board. His PAK started to flash then it gave off a 'DING!'. Zim put his PAK back on before saluting.

"Well, I've got more to do now my Tallest, Don't be surprised if I've already taken care of the humans by the time you get here. Invader Zim signing of-" only to be glomped by a little cyan eyed robot, "My SpInE!" "AND WORK ON YOUR PAK ZIM IT GOT DAMAGED!" Purple managed to yell before the transmission cut.

* * *

Purple glided over to the next screen where Red was observing the hologram of Cat. Purple knew what he was thinking. "Don't worry" he said to Red as he pat him on the back "If we're lucky Zim will kill her!" he said merrily as he floated away. Red looked back at her.

"…That's what worries me…"

**

* * *

**

**AUTHORS END CHAPTER NOTES**:

DUH DUH DUH!!!!!!!!!! The plot thickens more to resemble Potato Soup! And this is what readers get if I get held back from writing. ALL my stuff piles up in my mind until I get all of it out at once. Thought it takes 2 hours to write it all down from paper to computer. YES I WROTE ALL THIS BY HAND! And just think. If this is how long a chapter ends up when I'm held back for nearly 2 months. JUST THINK OF HOW MUCH THERE'LL BE IF I DIDN'T WRITE ALL SCHOOL YEAR! I COULD PRACTICLY POST THE ENTIRE STORY IN ONE CHAPTER! But I doubt my fingers would allow it. REMEMBER about the quote! See ya soon!

_**READ AND REVIEW PLZ!!! PLZPLZPLZPLZPLZ!?!?!?!**_

-**GadgetCid**


	5. NanoZim

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Everyone! Guess what? SCHOOL'S OUT!!!! WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO! Anyway, on to the other notes. You know the disclaimer and the thanking people and stuff.

Thank you to everyone who has commented so far. I FEEL SO LOVED!

Thanks to DhaosValor for at least trying to guess the quote. He's the only one who did so he'll get the walk on roll next chapter. The correct answer though was Sherlock Holmes. (I'm a HUGE Doyle fan) Who said that line in "A Study In Scarlet".

**Now on for the Disclaimer. I do not own Invader Zim, Dib or anything, person or events that are in the show. But the things that you read that are NOT in the show are my own playoff of the ingénues creation made by J.V.**

**By the way, for those of you who don't know how I write all this up, I write it down by hand in a un-used Compositions book (you know the one that High School kids use in science). And this chapter (Including the things that I have taken out) took all of 13 pages FRONT AND BACK. So considering that time is of the essence (I need to write all this down at once or I loose my train of thought) it was necessary to take things out and save them for a later date. Enough of Gadgetcid's talking ON TO THE FIC!**

_Chapter 5_

_Nano Zim_

The next day at "Skool" was uneventful compared to yesterday's action packed, humiliating, and (in Cat's case) painful day. Yet an uneventful day was exactly what the duo needed. A day to prepare, plan, and recover for what was about to come. Cat's foot was almost recovered thanks to her dad, her shoes were almost done (Dib told Cat that she needed to hurry up but she asked him "Or, here's an idea, why don't YOU repair the shoes that can walk and/or cling to any kind of metal known to man kind at voice command and I sit back and tell you to hurry up! Want to give THAT a try and see how YOU hold up?"), and Dib was planning on there next move to ether expose Zim, stop Zim from a stage in world domination, or gather info on Zim and any other possibly known alien species that might have had conflict with the "Irken Empire". He tried to get all the info he could from the S.E's (Swollen Eyeball Net) last night at the meeting that he called together. But they all had to instantly get off due to the fact that Agent "MetalTooth" was taken away to the "Happy town" by people who suddenly raided his house during the meeting. Dib told Cat what he found out during lunch, which wasn't what they didn't know already, and sadly reported the loss of another member.

"We need new members." Dib explained sadly "We're down to 3 in Africa, 4 in Asia, 2 in Europe, 1 in Australia, 3 in South America and 4 in America." "We really have 4 people still in the country?" Cat questioned, "2 of them are us." "Oh" Cat groaned.

"Who are the 2 others?"

"Agent Darkbootie and a new member Agent Mezmo-Phantom" Cat paused in turning her screwdriver that was tighting a bolt on a shoe. "Mezmo?"

"It means pulled into electronics." Dib explained, "He just joined up last week, about our age, but he's on the other side of the US."

"Oh" Cat groaned again, and went back to repairing her shoe and apparently, listening to the gossip of the popular table not too far from them. Cat's ears suddenly perked up (A.N: Yes her ears can move, and so can mine.). She had obviously found something interesting. Then Dib heard it too, their names were mentioned. Then the girl started talking about the rejects, or the "Dorks" at the other table. Then Dib caught the word "Inhuman", which, obviously, made him look at the non-human Zim who was now "Spacing out" with a look that said "What am I going to do?" on his face. It was now obvious whom the girl was talking about and why. Zim started to do something weird a few moments later to the geeks. But considering that there was really nothing they could do at the moment (plus Cat was still sort of injured. She could walk but she couldn't kick anything without feeling a lot of pain.) They decided to sit this one out. Because they both knew that it would lead to pandemonium later, which it did. Poor Keef…Never stood a chance.

* * *

Cat's POV:

When we heard the news about that poor boy, we knew that this was probably just an example of what the world was like with Zim. If anyone was to tick him off like Keef did…Well…Yeah.

ANYWAY, Dib got this idea, which was INGENUS at the time, to go and spy on Zim that night. The opportunity was perfect. Zim was exhausted and would not be expecting anyone to bother with him after such a close call and it being a false alarm to the (I can't believe I'm saying this) stupid humans. (It's true though, they are stupid.) But he forgot about us over the chaos that Keef made. And he forgot about Dib. Though Zim's alien defenses were armed with the ability to fight an army of elephants, and his house and base beneath was tough enough to withstand a nuclear bomb, nothing, and I MEAN NOTHING, could withstand Dib. He was, and still is, a force of nature onto himself. As Sherlock Holmes said about Lastrade in that show about him in the 22nd century. One of the few interesting shows that doesn't rot my brain when I turn on the T.V. But passing over that, Dib made it back with, not just info, but a picture.

"Comeoncomeoncomeon!" I egged my paranormal partner when he came to my dad's lab beneath my house. My Dad was just like Professor Membrane in planning. Always kept a spare lab downstairs beneath the house. But my dad was never home, save for the once a year time with me and my Birthday where he just stops by to say "Happy Birthday" to me. I wished that he'd have spent more time with me BEFORE things got out of hand. "Let's see it!" I continued to egg Dib until he put the disk in the computer and loaded the picture. And LO and BEHOLD, there was Zim, without his disguise. He looked just as I had pictured he would. The only thing that was different was the eyes and the antennas. This was just the thing we needed to expose him. We just needed someone to get this picture on TV. I kept thinking while staring at the picture that was on the computer. All the possibilities that layer before us. What could happen, what will we do, it was all there. But somewhere in my thinking, I THINK I was trying to remember something. I can't remember what it was exactly right now. But ether way it wasn't important. I snapped out of my trance by Dib's "huh…". I looked at him, wondering what he was thinking.

"What?" I asked him

"Well…" he started. Then he shook his head, "No, no forget it…"

"Tell me!" I egged him once again

"It's just…you two look so much a like."

I stared at him in disbelief. "How? HOW could I look like that green life-form" I thought. Dib obviously knew what I was thinking. So he started to defend his reason,

"Look" he pointed to Zim on the screen "He's got no oils on his….Skin. You barley have oils on your skin, he has wiry antennas, you have wirely hair, and you both have the same look on your face when something goes wrong or when you're angry or in disbelief." I rolled my eyes and looked away from him and to the empty water-tank. "Wait nevermind about the look of disbelief, that's someone else's look of disbelief." Dib said

"Who's?"

"Remember 'Beetlejuice' at the end of the movie when's he's in that waiting room with the numbers and his is about 1,400,856,000 and it's only at about 2?"

"I DO NOT! And it was 9,998,383,750,000"

"You remember that?"

"It's my favorite movie, I've seen it about 167 times." I froze at this point, realizing what I just said, and slapped my forehead. I looked at Dib, who had a raised eyebrow. "…Ok I watched it a few nights ago with dad after you left and I ate some ice cream. You know how that gets me. It's nothing new. And that's our favorite movie. Give me a break."

"So that's what you guys do on that Father-Daughter night!"

"We don't really go out…. Dad hasn't "Gone out" ever…well at least not as long as I've been around. He probably did go out with…" I stopped myself. The word that almost left my mouth was "Mom". I didn't have a "Mom". And even so, I didn't even know a thing about her. The reason why I had bailey any oils on my skin was because of a birth defect. My dad once told me, on my 9th birthday when I asked him why I looked like this, that I was born prematurely. But I had to be because mom…Mom was dieing…and as soon as I was out she passed away. I kept thinking about that as I looked onto the keyboard. Why didn't dad talk about her? Why weren't there any pictures of her? What was her name? I didn't know anything about the women that gave me birth. I never knew what a mother was.

"Hey Cat." Dib's voice invaded my thoughts again and brought me back from my own little world. "Maybe you should talk to your dad next time you get the chance. Maybe he just hasn't said anything because he still hasn't recovered from her death."

I should have done so that night…If I did, maybe things would be a lot less difficult then they are now.

* * *

Dib's POV:

I didn't tell Cat where I saved the file. Zim might have tried to do something drastic. After all, he knows that Cat and I were friends and she would more then likely know where it was. In the long run, Mayyyyyyybe I should have told her. Because the next night, things got out of hand. I was about to send a copy of the disk to Mysterious Mysteries when, all of a sudden, I lost control of my arms. Gaz, who was on the couch with me, playing her Game Slave, got annoyed with my arms and luckily spared me because she was on the last level. After she left, my arms took hold of the envelope that the copy was in and tore it in half so that the disk fell next to me. One of my hands picked it up. The next thing I know, the TV went all fuzzy and suddenly Zim was on. "Hello Dib" He said menacingly.

"What the…" I tried to make sense of what was going on "What are you doing in my TV?" was the best thing I could say.

"I'm not in your TV Dib I'm transmitting from (now, he said this in a really creepy way) In SiDe YoUr BoDy! Spooky an't it?"

* * *

Normal POV (A.N: Yes I know Dib's was short but don't worry you get a longer time inside the head of Dib in later chapters. Trust me, the occupation is needed in that space.):

Next door: Cat continued to read a new book that she got a few days ago, "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" when her peace was disturbed by a yell from across the street. "DIB!" she yelled herself. She knew that this could only mean one thing: Trouble. With a capital T I might add. And THAT'S hard to find these days! Cat ran as fast as she could with her still recovering foot and burst into the door of the membrane household. She spotted Dib on the couch with…was that Zim on TV? She hid around the corner as she listened.

"And as an added bonus, I might as well make your brain…not smart no more. Then I'll go after your girlfriend!" Cat did her disbelief look again. "Why does everybody keep saying that?" She wisped as Dib said the exact same thing to Zim. "She's not my Girlfriend and she doesn't know where the file is ether!"

"Huh?" Zim replied

"What does the Sentence "Only I know where the original copy is" MEANS? ONLY I KNOW WHERE IT IS! So don't you DARE hurt her!" Cat however, did not hear this, as she was banging her head on the wall after hearing Zim's stupidity. After she was done though, the TV was blank and Dib brushed the copy off the couch. "Dib?" Cat said as she ran to him "Are you-" "HE'S INSIDE ME! HE'S GONNA" "Wipe out your brain I know! I heard everything!" Dib's face turned beet-red "Everything?" He asked nervously. "Everything" Cat thought for a second before running out the door saying "DON'T MOVE!".

A few seconds later Cat came back, her arms full of electronic items. She set up a control panel on the table in front of Dib and pushed an empty plastic bag into his hands. "Take it," she said urgently "The nano-ship's inside there, I've been improving it." Dib swallowed the empty air that the bag held. Only when the screen on the control panel came on, it showed he swallowed something else. Dib was about to grab the controls on the panel when Cat shoved something else into his hands. "What's this?" he asked as he stared at the PS2 controller he was now holding. "It's the new controls" she replied, "The old ones can't handle the ship with the new stuff I added."

"How do I work it?" Cat rolled her eyes again, "Use the stick to control your path, the L1 and R1 buttons to scroll through your weapons, the circle button locks on, the triangle button cancels things, the square button is to boost, the X button is to fire, and the left analog stick, R2, L2 buttons control the camera." Dib blinked for a few times before realizing that every moment that was going by, he was less likely to live. Dib took the controls, trying to remember what Cat said, and drove the ship forward as best as a newbe to videogames could. "We're coming Zim!" Dib spoke. He got into the blood stream, only to almost collide with a little flag with an odd symbol on it. "What the- Oh no you don't!" he pushed the ship faster.

After some tricky maneuvering, (Dib obviously had beginners luck and it's a good thing he did.) Zim was in sight. At first Dib thought of sending a boasting transmission to him. But Cat's voice suddenly rang through his head, "Give the enemy no indication of what you're doing". He realized that now was not the time to brag. He glanced at Cat who was watching his progress over his shoulder. "Got to remember to thank her later" he thought. He locked on to Zim's ship and scrolled through the weapons. "Try the grappling hook." Cat advised. He did so and fired the hook. It struck fast and both Cat and Dib heard a CRUNCH from the screen. NOW was the time to rub it in Zim's face. Dib put up a transmission to Zim, "We've got you Zim!" Dib spoke to the screen as the grappling hook started to real in the ship. The ship broke free and started to go through the blood cell wall and into the muscle. Dib followed. Then Zim's ship drove low and scraped something. Dib let go of the controls and yelled. "Ahhh! My Spleen!" Cat held Dib with concern. "New game?" came a sudden voice. They both wheeled around and Gaz was standing just behind the couch looking at the control screen. "This is no game" Dib replied "THIS IS MY LIFE!" "Yeah, it's cool looking, but it's still just a game. So when you die can I play?" Cat and Dib both looked at each other with looks of shock. Dib when back to the controls. Cat looked at Zim's ship with great interest as Dib and Zim engaged in a verbal fight and Gaz asked if it was an online game. Cat then noticed the hand looking things at the bottom of the ship.

"NOT GOOD!" she yelled, "Dib let me do it!" "Hold it, he's in my treygia!" Dib's ship clung onto something, "GET AWAY FROM MY BRAIN ZIM!" he took a deep breath and Zim's ship started to fall, but then it collided with Dib's and they both fell into the stomach. "You know, you just had to breath out and he'd be out you know?" Gaz notified the two. Dib's eyes went big and Cat glared at Gaz. Her cue to GO AWAY ELSE SHE GET BUTT-WHUPED AGAIN! Gaz slinked out of the room and away from her gaze. A voice brought them back to the matter at hand. "I grow tired of this!" Suddenly the enemy ship transformed into a fighting robot in a mater of seconds.

"Oh no! I knew it!" Cat yelled. "Dib hit R3"!

"Where's R3?"

"HOLY FLY PAPER DIDN'T YOUR DAD EVER GET YOU A GAME SLAVE?"

"Yes but Gaz always-" he cut off short as he suddenly lost control off his arms. "Oh no." Cat whispered. "ARMS LIKE NOODLES!" Dib cried. Cat thought for a second then she gathered the materials together. "Follow me, we don't have much time!" As fast as they could they made there way next door and down into Professor Zatter Taylor's lab where Cat took out a long tube with a needle in it. "Cat?" Dib asked, "What are you-" "This is the up-grade." She said as she struck the needle in her arm and withdrew blood. She stuck the bottle in an opening in the control panel and the blood suddenly drained from the tube. Dib noticed something was happening to the nano-ship. It had started to change. In a mater of seconds it was a fighting robot just like Zim's. But it looked like Cat in a cool fighting outfit. He looked at Cat who now had some white stickers on her arms and legs and glasses that looked like his dad's on her eyes. "The DNA allows me to transform the ship and control it like I am the ship so you might want to stand back. Cat rose her arms and started to position them in different directions. He noticed that as she did this, the ship moved in that direction. Dib suddenly felt a searing pain in his brain, and then,

"Oh no" he whispered, "I can't remember where the file is Cat. He did it! HE MADE ME FORGET!"

"Well at least he didn't take you're whole brain with it in that shot" Cat reminded him. Dib looked at the screen, Zim was now in plain sight. Cat winced a little and squirmed too. Dib looked at her, then he remembered her foot was still hurt. "Cat, what about your foot?" "I won't use it" But that was the last thing Dib remembered. Because Cat and Zim's shipped both fought around his brain (Well, Cat fought, Zim played the punching bag) and Dib went haywire.

Zim didn't get a good look at the thing that was fighting him, it moved too fast for him to see what it looked like. Though he was pretty sure that it was the nano-ship that Dib had. Zim flailed about, trying to at least get a glimpsed of what it was so that he could counter attack it and defend himself. But he just couldn't hit it. (It's a good thing Cat knew Southern-Praying mantis style Kung Fu. Hey, if you were a genus and board you'd want to learn some sort of Karate too.) It was only when, (Note that it was SHERE LUCK) that Zim struck Cat's foot, and due to the fact that the sticky things controlled movement were connected to her nerves as well, she felt it. She stopped to clench her teeth momentarily, but that was just enough time for Zim to get a good look at his attacker. "What?" Zim thought "How?" Then he looked closer at the robot and saw everything that was going on.

"It's amazing that you're able to invent things like this Cat!" he spoke to her through the control panel, knowing that she could hear him. "And with your planet's primitive technology! Even the most advanced Irken scientists aren't even in the test stage for this program! And yet you! You're only what 12 Earth rotations around the sun? Are you POSITIVE that you're not Irken?" Cat froze for a moment before launching herself at Zim "DON'T" the robot yelled to the Zim in the ship "EVER COMPARE ME TO YOUR SPECIES!" She Karate Chopped the head of the robot that Zim was in clean off the rest of the robot and the detached head fell back down Dib's tregia.

* * *

After Cat fixed Dib's arms, and Zim flushed out of Dib's system, the duo cleaned up the mess that Cat had made in her effort to save Dib. When Dib took the bottle that held Cat's blood out of the panel he examined it. The program had used the blood up, but there was still a drop left. However, something was odd about it. "Hey Cat?"

"Hm?"

"What's this blue stuff in your blood tube?"

"My blood."

Dib turned around fast to look at Cat "What?" he asked

"All blood is blue, but it turns red when air is applied." She answered calmly. "Dib curiously stared at her. "But there's air in-"

"It's one of my dad's blood vials. It ejects air when the extraction needle is in, go a head, open it!" Dib unscrewed the top of the vial and sure enough the blood instantly turned red. "Oh" he said, "I didn't know that…"

"I do read an awful lot, by the way how was Mysterious Mysteries tonight?"

"It was just the Bigfoot episode again but I did forget about the-hang on, how did you know I-"

"You needed the address right?" She interrupted "The address to the studio is always at the end of the show, and I know that you like that show anyway so I know that you would watch the whole thing and not just wait for then end." She grunted the last word as she lifted a box of the controls that they used onto a shelf. Dib stood there with a perplexing look. Till finally he understood "You were reading Sherlock Holmes before this happened weren't you?" "I just finished reading "A Scandal in Bohemia". Truly one of the best cases. Guess what? HOLMES GETS OUTSMARTED BY A GIRL" She sang, "Isn't that the 3rd book out of the entire collection?" Dib asked "You just got that book yesterday!" Cat paused. She thought in silence then, "Dib, anyone can read a lot if they stopped watching TV and rotting there brain with all those "Poop" beverages and put there brain to work."

"But Cat no one is suppose to read 3 cases of Sherlock Holmes at your age in just 24 hours! And with no adult to translate what things mean, not to mention sleep and eating and school and hygiene and- " "DIB!" Cat wheeled around so suddenly he jumped back "NOW YOU'RE NOTICING THAT I'M NOT NORMAL?!" she took a deep breath and calmed down.

"Dib," she began "I'm an inventor at 11, one who invents and perfects things that not even a supposedly superior alien race have been able to. Most kids my age can't even posses a simple thought! Haven't you not noticed that I'm a genus Dib?" Dib stood in silence and felt a little guilty, he hadn't noticed. He had spent so much time with her and not opened his eyes to see what lied before him. He just was so thrilled to have met someone so close to his own intelligence and interests that he didn't notice that she was FAR more advanced then she was 5 years ago. He just accepted her genus as just her personality. Not her brain, until now.

"Wait," he said as a sudden thought struck him, "If you're so smart, why don't you go to collage?" Cat laughed "Because, do you think that I would want to go off to collage where I'd be on my own as a known member of the swollen eyeballs? And with you VS Zim on your own! Not to mention Gaz and the rest of skool! By the way did you know that 'Skool' was once spelled "School" about 30 years ago? In fact everyone was a lot smarter 30 years ago. Then all of a sudden everyone got stupid." Cat smiled at Dib. He stood pondering for a moment before remembering that she had saved his life again.

"Thanks for…saving my life…for the…how many times is that now?" "15th time" Cat replied "The score of me saving your life is 15 you saving mine: 13"

"Don't forget about a week ago with you almost falling off the roof!"

"Ok Me saving you 15, you saving me 14, happy now?" Dib nodded.

"Good" Cat said "Now we have a new score to keep" Cat turned to Dib " Earth: 2 Irk: 1. We got the first point by getting a head start on the transmission, Zim got a point because he got to Keef, and we got the final one for we have won this battle."

"But Zim got the disk so shouldn't it be Earth: 2 Irk: 2?" Dib reminded Cat. Cat rolled her eyes again.

"There's that Beetlejuice look again!"

"SHUT IT DIB!"

* * *

**Authors Notes: Wow! The Beetlejuice thing came out of nowhere! I'm serious, I'm typing and I suddenly picture Cat's eye rolling look and I notice where I got that look in my head from and my fingers just started typing! Wow! And the controller moment was inspired by that part in "Men in Black 2"; I thought that part was hilarious! Anyway, THE PLOT IS SO THICK, I NEED A SHOVLE TO STIR IT! It gets thicker too! Just wait! I wanted to put more info on Cat's dad and her family (and GIR too! GIR FOR PRESEDENT!) But I didn't have enough room, so I need to fit it into the next chapter. Along with DhaosValor's walk-on roll! By the way his birthday is on the 29th! So that chapter will come really soon! Promise! READ AND REVIEW PEOPLE! Tell me which parts you like and what you're confused about! Till next time! Oh, and thank you to everyone who's reviewed especially Dhaos, K.P-Chan, Queen Lola, Invader-Katz, Imagi, and Kradeiz. Actually I think that everyone who's reviewed. THANK YOU! My people! (Whips a teer from eye) (Moment from Kradeiz's fanfiction "FreakaDan!" Chapter 3) THANK YOU! GOOD NIGHT!**

**-Gadgetcid**


	6. Found and Lost Forever

**Okokokokokok. I'm sorry that I didn't update in a super long time. But due to unforeseen events that were TOTALLY out of my control, I had to put off putting this up. Thanks to KP-Chan who was the only person who reviewed for the previous chapter. THANX! You'll have a walk on in this chap! Along with Dhaos, for his LONG overdue b-day present. Now the Disclamer:**

**GadgetCid does not own Invader Zim, nor Dib or anything, person or events that are in the show. But the things that you read that are NOT in the show are my own playoff of the ingénues creation made by J.V.**

_**Chapter 6**_

_**Found and Lost Forever**_

The next morning Dib, as usual, went to Cat's house bright and early at 7 o clock sharp. With the same old routine with the same old sky facing the same old door, last night's event seemed like a month ago as the ordinary events of the day started to roll. Everything was going great. Except Dib had a pang of guilt, leaving Cat after her outburst at him, he ran off. Leaving her to deal with the mess that HE (technically) made. But that lab was ALWAYS messy. Her dad, Professor Zatter Taylor never came home, never used the lab after the lab at the Membrane Center had a self-cleaning program installed, and never got back to cleaning up that lab.

So, if Cat had continued in, not only cleaning up THEIR mess, but the mess her father left too, she'd have been up all night. Rinsing out the beakers, alphabetizing the books, and finally taking care of the closet with all the chemicals. Dib shuddered and shut his eyes as he remembered a time when Cat's cat, Dwicky, had carried out a weird looking substance that was not natural in the dimension that they were currently in. It had actually sprung alive and started to go up Dib's nose.

"Dib, are you all right?" Dib opened his eyes to Cat as she stood with her door a jar. "I've been standing here a whole minute. You looked kind of weird. Like the time the goo started going up your nose."

"Don't remind me please." He replied and shuddered again at the memory of feeling the slime fill his nostrils with its gooey form. Cat laughed. Dib glared. "I'm serious, how would you feel if something was moving around in YOUR nose." "Disturbed and Panicked." Came a sudden voice from behind Cat.

Dib looked into the house to see a man in a white lab coat with blond hair standing on the stairs. "Trust me" Professor Taylor said, "I know what it feels like." Cat turned around "How do you know Dad?"

Professor Taylor closed his eyes and shuddered. "Just trust me." Cat laughed again and ran to her father for a hug. "I love you Dad."

"I love you too sweetheart. Be good." Professor Taylor said as he embraced his daughter. Cat ended the moment and ran out of the house, took Dib's hand and ran off with Dib trying to match her speed.

* * *

A block later Cat had stopped and let go of Dib's hand so that he could catch his breath. As Dib was panting for breath she dug into her jean jacket pocket and took out a lollypop, strawberry. "You caught your breath yet?" She said with the candy in her mouth. Dib looked at her. With something of utter confusion. Cat smiled. "I suppose you're wondering why Dad's come home and whey we're so close now?" He nodded. It was no wonder why he was confused; Cat's Dad NEVER was home. Except on the 2 days out of the entire year, one was Cat's birthday, and the other was the movie night. They would hardly talk during those moments anyway. 

So when the great professor was standing behind his daughter, the one he barely knew, Dib had his brain crash. Too much confusion. That and his brain wasn't 100 recovered from last night. So the surprise was a bit too much for him to mentally conform. Not even HIS dad was as close as that. Dib had never seen a Father/Child moment, ever. Cat dug into her pocket again and took out a grape lollypop. "Here. It'll give you a temporary burst of energy. Just enough so that you can fall asleep during class." Dib took the offering gladly and put the sweet in his mouth and instantly felt the rush of energy that he needed to continue their trek to "Skool". "Get ready for a flash back." Cat warned the boy in the black cloak.

* * *

FLASHBACK 

LAST NIGHT AFTER DIB RAN OFF

Cat continued cleaning up the lab after the mess they made. Or the mess that ZIM made. But she didn't mind. She liked to clean. (Just as long as it wasn't her room.) While she organized, washed, and swept she was able to think faster while she was moving. She thought about…Well everything. Books, music, art, new gadgets, and Zim. To her, by the time she finished the mess Zim made. She needed to do more. So she started on the rest of the lab. Not even concentrating on the task that she was doing so sufficiently, she thought about the world even more.

Being the only person in a 3-story house meant that she had to clean up after herself and Dwicky. That meant, dusting, vacuuming, washing, laundry and every other house hold chore had to be done by her. So when she had to do it, she had a schedule of what to do in the house and how to do it. Meaning, if she did it on autopilot, then it would give her time to think of the next gadget that could help her and Dib, or about another attempt on an attack for Zim.

Her train of thought came to a screeching halt as she realized that someone was coming down the stairs to the lab. "Dib?" She yelled from behind the mountain of clean beakers, "I thought you went home!" She expected to hear Dib, telling her that he felt guilty about leaving her to clean up the mess on her own. But instead a man's voice, much older then Dib, replied "Cat? What are you doing?" She looked around the pile to see her father standing in the doorway. She started to walk toward him, in full curiosity mode. "Dad?" Cat said in a tone of disbelief as she took off the wet green apron and the latex gloves. "What are you doing here? Why are you home? You're NEVER home". The professor took of his goggles to reveal baby blue eyes, looking into his daughters own.

"Jo said that you and Dib had another "moment". I got worried when he said that you were using something on yourself and came down here."

"Geeze, Professor Membrane doesn't have much confidence in his own son." Cat thought as she spun up a cover up. "No Dad" she crossed her arms, "We did NOT have another "moment". I had a problem with deleting the virus in your lab's compy. **_(A.N: My sister and I say Compy instead of computer.)_** It almost made the world shut down. I managed to take care of it but Dib got an electric shock and it almost damaged his brain. I used the nano-ship to help Dib recover but some how the virus got into Dib and I had to use the nerve connections to deal with it."

"Nerve Connections?"

Cat pulled out the white stickys from a near by desk and put them in her Dad's hand. He examined the white stickys closely with great curiosity before he said something. "You made this?" "Well, not on my own" Cat said. The professor looked at her. "You made the nano-ship. I just added my own stuff to it." Zatter gaped at his daughter "Cat" he said, "you realize that with these adjustments, we can battle the virus of some of the most deadliest kind with this?" he lifted the white sticky in the air. "Can it battle the stupidity in 98.2 percent of all human beings on this planet?" she sarcastically commented. Her father looked at her sternly, knowing what she meant by that. "Sorry" she apologized. "I haven't spoken with you like this in years. And I've been cleaning all night. What have you been doing Dad? Sticking maple surup on all this stuff?" She gestured towards the pile of now clean beakers and test tubes. Zatter stared blankly at his daughter.

"What?" Cat looked at her cloths. "Is there something on my face?" He shook his head. "I'm just surprised." He looked around at the cleanness of it all. "I haven't seen this place THIS clean since you were 8." "Well" Cat blushed "I'm not done yet. I've still got to get to that closet. I've seen Dwicky carry some PrEtTy weird stuff out of there. Remember Dib and the goo that went up his nose? That's what happens when you leave chemicals to gather dust." She put on the yellow gloves again and started to make her way to the closet. Zatter raced to the door and stood in front of it as to block her. "No Cat" he said with sternness in his voice. "There might be something dangerous behind there."

"Dad, that's why I've learned Southern Praying Mantis Style Kung Fu." She tried to push her dad out of the way but he wouldn't budge. "To deal with any threat that comes my way. I've dealt with bullies, Gaz, the virus, and the cops once, if you remember. I'm sure I can deal with what ever comes out of there. Unless you don't want me going back there because you're hiding something." He twitched. Cat put her arms down and stared at him. "You ARE hiding something in there?" Professor Taylor sighed, his arms went limp and he stared at his shoes. "Not hiding." He said wearily. "Just keeping away. It's too painful."

Cat suddenly realized what it was that was behind the door. "Dad" she walked closer to him. "It's all the stuff that's of Mom right?" He nodded sadly. Cat looked behind him. All her questions about her mother were behind that door. No wonder she could never find anything. She never dared to look in that closet ever since the goo. Now the door seemed to beckon her to it. As if it were saying "Come, discover your past." She looked back at her Dad, Who was still staring at the floor. Only now, pools of tears were forming in his eyes. "Dad" she called to him. He looked up at his only child. "I want to know." Her words echoed in the lab forever. As if it were all the times Cat had said that in her mind, what she had been thinking of all her life, finally broke free and was beginning to penetrate the barrier that the widowed professor had built over the 11 lonely years.

Finally he smiled. "You have the right to know. And I've been denying that right for your whole life. That makes me a pretty lousy father I guess." He stood out of the way and opened the door. Cat looked inside. It was a regular closet. No chemicals. Just one box sitting up on a high shelf. Her dad walked over to the box and took it down from the shelf, raising dust in its wake. He came out and smiled at Cat. "Let's go upstairs."

END FLASHBACK

* * *

Cat reached into her pocket and handed Dib a photo. The photo was of a woman in her mid 20s, with long auburn hair and beautiful green eyes. Her arms were around a man with short blond hair. Both of them were smiling at the camera. "This is your Mom?" Dib asked "Yep, her name's Kimmy." Cat happily replied. "This is the night Dad proposed to Mom. Or when Mom proposed to Dad. It was the last day of Hanukkah. He was surprised, he didn't mean to for it to happen THAT night. He just got the ring that day but he lost the box and Mom just came though his door, so he put it in the bag of Gelt he was going to give to her little cousin Kiara. When she pulled out some Gelt for dreidel later that night pulled out the ring and showed it to Mom. She knew what was going on and proposed to my Dad with the ring. He was down right flustered." 

"Gelt?" Dib questioned.

"You've seen it before, you know, the money that's used in dreidel?"

"Oh yeah. Sorry I've only seen it once. That was probably one of the most peaceful nights I ever had."

"It was pretty…"

Cat suddenly fell silent. She stopped walking and looked around the last block of the suburbs. "What?" Dib asked, the lollypop almost gone. Cat covered his mouth. Almost making the stick hit the uvula. "We're being watched." She whispered.

"How can you tell?"

Cat pointed to a shadow just around the corner they had just turned. It stood still. Dib tip toed closer to the shadow to see it's owner, then Cat dragged him back by the collar of his cloak. "You made me swallow the lollypop!" He whispered in her ear. She put a finger on his lips and mouthed "QUIET". She began to look around the empty street. She put her hand on her chin, as if in deep thought. Then she smiled. She reached into her backpack, took out a mirror and placed it on a birdhouse peg on a tree next to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. "Come on Dib, let's go. It was probably nothing."

She took his hand and dragged him around the corner. Cat stopped and took out another mirror in her pocket and looked into it. "Cat" Dib said, "What are you?" he looked into the mirror. Zim was creeping up the sidewalk they just were on, with what looked like a microphone reaching out as far as it could from his PAK. Dib looked at Cat, Cat looked at Dib (With a smug look.) "Oh" Dib mouthed. Cat looked back at the mirror, Zim was looking around. Obviously wondering what happened to them.

Then sun just started to come up when Cat's grin resembled that of the Grinch when he had the idea to steal Christmas. She picked up a small pebble and threw it to the tree that the first mirror was on. The pebble hit a week part of the bark and it made a loud CRUNCH when it hit. Zim looked at the tree and spotted the mirror. Cat looked back into the mirror, which had the mirror in the background that Zim was looking into. Zim spotted Cat and his eyes bulged, then Cat struck. She directed the mirror to the rising sun which rays bounced off her mirror, onto the next one and right into Zim's eyes.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! MY EYES!" Zim screamed in pain, rolling on the ground rubbing his eyes. Cat and Dib burst out into laughter for what seemed like ages. Before Cat realized that they were going to be late if they didn't get a move on. "LATER ZIM! NEXT TIME, BE A LITTLE MORE SUDDLE!"

Cat continued her tale to Dib as they speed walked to the "Skool". "Dad was telling me everything about every picture that I looked at. My grandpa Cal on my Mom's side has the same hair as me by the way, I always wondered about why I have red hair and Dad didn't. Any way. I was really enjoying myself and I was starting to feel like a normal kid with a normal Dad when it all came to a screeching halt." Dib looked at her funny. "How?" Cat stopped and turned red. "Well…"

* * *

FLASHBACK 

Cat continued to dig though the box, pulling photo after photo out while her Dad explained. With each photo or videodisk she felt a bit more connected to her broken family. But then she reached in and pulled out a red disk. "Hey Dad, What's this?" The Professor's eye's bulged and he snatched the disk out of her hands and thrust it into his coat pocket. "I thought I burnt that." He whispered. Cat glared at her Dad. "DAD, What is it?" She forcibly said. "Ummm…Uh…" "DAD! TELL ME! WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?" The Professor's face turned beet red and his eyes shifted from one end of the room to the other. "Ummm…Ah…. Well…"

"DAD!"

"I'm trying to put this into words. This isn't easy. This is actually quite odd."

"Huh?"

"Ummm…. Well honey…" He put his arm around his daughter. "When…When a Mommy and a Daddy love ea-"

"EWWWWWWWWWW! OKOKOKOKOKOKIGETIT!" Cat covered her ears and started to roll on the floor.

END FLASHBACK

* * *

"EWWWWWWWWW!" Dib yelled on the front steps of the skool. "Yeah." Said a read faced Cat. 

"Can we drop this?"

"Gladly."

"Never speak of this again?"

"You read my mind." And with that they both entered the skool.

* * *

LATER 

LUNCH

Dib eyed Zim, Zim eyed Cat, Cat eyed the mash potatoes, and the mash potatoes eyed Dib. Dib then noticed the mash potatoes eyeing him. "This thing is alive…"

"You JUST noticed?" The mash potatoes suddenly started to move off the tray and onto the table. "It's after your note pad Dib." Dib took his notes and put it into his pocket. The Potatoes calmed down and once again remained inanimate. "That was disturbing." Dib said. "You mean your planet's food isn't suppose to move?" They both turned around and Zim was standing behind them with a vacant expression. "No." Cat said. Zim looked down at the tray he was carrying. The potatoes slept peacefully.

Cat looked concerned. Then she got up and looked at Zim. "Cat?" Dib asked, "What are you doing?" "Dib, I hate him just as much as I would any alien but I wouldn't let anything be eaten by the lunch special. That's way too brutal. Even for an evil alien race." Dib opened his mouth to argue. But then realized that she was right. No one deserved that.

Cat turned back to Zim and started to explain about sack lunches, when there was a cry from the window. "HEY!" A kid called Leo yelled to the cafeteria. "ONE OF THE HOUSES IN THE SUBURBS JUST EXPLODED! YOU CAN SEE IT ALL THE WAY FROM HERE!" All the kids rushed to the window and started chatting. Cat tried to see which house it was, but there were too many kids in the way. But Dib made it through some how. "Poor family." He thought as he looked at the far away house. "They'll be out on the street now, and that's in our neiborhood too." He looked closer at the houses surrounding it.

"Wait a minute…" He said with fear in his voice. He counted the houses on the street leading up to the one on fire. His eyes widened. "CAT!" He yelled. Cat's eyes widened. "That's MY house." The kids looked back at her for a moment. Then they all turned back to the scene. Dib made his way through back to Cat. He had never seen her like that before, she was white with shock. It looked like she was going to faint. "Cat" He said to her, trying to make out "I'm Sorry" but instead Cat's voice rose first. "DAD!" She started to run, and then she turned around and took off her newsboy hat. The one she loved so much, and gave it to Dib. "If anything happens to me, take care of this." She took off out of the cafeteria. Dib was now shaking as he held on to the hat. Cat's dad was in the house. Dib took off and followed Cat. But she was too fast; she was WAY far a head of him. But he knew where she was going.

The firefighters just arrived as soon as Dib arrived. Cat was nowhere in sight. He looked around for her, expecting to see her ether being held back by a firefighter or safely in her dad's arms. He hoped it was the seconded one. She had practically just got a Dad last night. It would be cruel to have him taken away so quickly. Not to mention all the stuff. The pictures, she'd brought most of them with her to show but the rest were more then likely gone. Her books were being fried to a crisp, though the Sherlock Holmes collection was safe in her locker at school. And the movies…. Well, she WOULD be devastated about Beetlejuice if her Dad was ok.

"Excuse me." Dib asked one of the firefighters. "Is a girl named Cat around here? This is her home and I'm wondering if she and her Dad are ok." "You mean the girl that ran in there?" He replied "WHAT?" Dib looked back at the burning house, "YOU MEAN SHE'S IN THERE? BOTH OF THEM?"

"No… We found the professor. But…." The fireman fell flat. Dib gasped…

The Great Professor Zatter Taylor was dead.

His world stopped for a moment.

The meaning had to sink in. But then he remembered. Cat was still in there. "CAT!" Dib ran towards the building that his best friend was in. But the fireman held him back. "They're trying to find her kid, we're doing everything we can." Dib just watched as the flames continued to consume the house. The ceiling suddenly fell in onto the 3rd story and the smoke surrounded the area. It was so thick; Dib couldn't see 3 feet in front of him.

The minutes passed. No sign of her. He lost faith. "She's gone." He whispered. His knees buckled and he felt tears welling up in his eyes. "She's gone." He repeated. He looked at the hat that he held in his grip. He saw her wearing it almost all his time with her. She would never go anywhere without it. It was then he realized that she knew that she would not live. Giving him her hat was her way of saying "Goodbye". "This can't be happening. Please…"

Then suddenly a voice rose up over the smoke and his despair "WE'VE GOT HER! SHE'S OUT!" He looked up, the smoke had cleared and in the arms of a fireman was Cat. "CAT!" he ran over to her as the man carrying her ran over to the ambulance. Dib looked at her, She was burnt badly on her arms and feet. Her beloved jacket was torn up and burnt and her hair was now shorter. About neck length. "Is she OK?" He asked the medical man in the ambulance. "She's got 2nd degree burns on her feet and legs and 1st degree on her neck. Her flesh is practically melting off. We'll do everything we can to save your girlfriend."

"Not my girlfriend." He whispered. But that didn't mater right now. She was alive. Bloody and burnt, but ALIVE. He actually started to cry. "Oh" he remembered. "This is hers." He gave the medical man her hat. But he gave it back. "You need to hold on to it, we need to examine her at the hospital. Keep it until she's ok." Dib nodded. Cat suddenly woke up, she was gasping for air but she was conscious. She looked at Dib "Dib" she mouthed. "Where's Dad?" Dib froze. He tried to make the words. But they couldn't come. But Cat understood. "Dad…. No…" As the Ambulance doors shut, driving away from the burning memories, Cat began to cry.

* * *

**Wow, that's the longest chapter I've written. And it took, lets see…1….3….7 hours….WOW…. Well, I'm tired. R&R PEOPLE!**

**I'm not going to even mention flames in this chapter.**


	7. Recovery

**Disclaimer Thingy: GadgetCid does not own Invader Zim, nor Dib or anything, person or events that are in the show. But the things that you read that are NOT in the show are my own playoff of the ingénues creation made by J.V. Oh and some words are to be Bleeped out because of Cat's naughty language and I don't tolerate that.**

**_I'm letting Dib write this chappy._ He's gonna tell you what happened after Cat woke up from a coma 2 weeks after the fire. I didn't really get a clear view of what happened so he's gonna write this chapter ok? Just remember, he's new writing to people on here.**

_

* * *

_

_Chapter 7_

_Recovery_

"WHAT THE (**Bleep**) IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? WHEN DID YOU THINK IT WAS OK NOT TO GET MY IMPUT ON THIS? SINCE WHEN HAS IT BEEN OK TO PREFORM (**Bleep**)ING BIONIC SURGURY ON A MINOR AND NOT EVEN GET THE PERMISSION FROM THE PATIENT? ARE YOU ALL MENALY ILL? HELLO? EARTH TO DOCTORS OF MERCY HOSPITAL! DO YOU KNOW HOW I'M FEELING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW? I'M AM SO (**Bleep**)-ING (**Bleep**)ED OFF RIGHT NOW IT'S NOT EVEN (**Bleep**)ING KIDDING! YOU WANNA KNOW WHY? I CREATE MACHINES, I DON'T LIVE BECAUSE OF THEM!"

Cat took a breath as she laid in her white, clean hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown in a hospital room. She had just woken up after being in a coma for 2 weeks. Cat's usually a good person during most of the day, at least in MY experience.

But when you bring her bad news the first thing when she wakes up.

MOVE OVER APOCALYPSE!

There's a new "Bringer of Doom" on the block.

But the doctors in the hospital unfortunately didn't know that.

In fact, I had only just came in the room when the sonic boom started at 4 PM, that's when I went to visit Cat. I didn't know that she would wake up today, hey, no one did. Had I'd known she would wake up I would have been there sooner. But I had apparently missed a few things, so I had no idea what triggered the outburst.

"It must have been something bad", I thought at that moment to myself.

"Miss Taylor" one of the doctors bravely said "Your foot was badly damaged and the rotten flesh had gotten into the bone. It was the only thing to do-"

"BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO ADD THIS!" She pointed to her left foot that was wrapped in the cotton gauze.

"But Miss, you wouldn't be able to walk without-"

"I'D RATHER BE IN A WHEEL CHAIR THE REST OF MY LIFE THEN HAVE THIS!"

"But Miss-"

"DON'T CALL ME MISS!" She slammed her fist on the near by table. "I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANYONE FOR THE NEXT 4 HOURS. BY THEN THE ONLY PERSON I EXPECT TO SEE IS ETHER THE NURSE FOR MY DINNER OR SPONGE BATH OR, Dib!" At the call of my name her voice had reverted back to normal volume. Good thing too, I was afraid I was going to go deaf.

The doctors in the room looked at me with faces of relief, fear and gratefulness. It was obvious why they were happy to see me. She hadn't been able to calm down in hours. And as the daughter of the Late Zatter Taylor, world famous scientist, who also happen to be the owner, founder and head of the Medical Research Center, which funded almost anything the hospital did, they needed to make the new owner of their funds, happy. They weren't doing such a good job at it.

This bad news that they had given her gave them a bigger reaction then they'd expected. I had calmed her down just by walking in the room. That's got to earn some respect points for me right?

Cat glared at the 2 white coat-wearing doctors and the 4 other doctors in different colored scrubs, closed her eyes, and sighed. "Get…Out…Now." She whispered. The doctors were only too pleased to leave. I started to follow them until Cat exclaimed "Not you Dib!" I turned around to face her. "Come over here." She pointed at a chair that I had often sat in these 2 weeks. I obeyed and sat down. She was looking around the white room with but a bay view window in there. I looked at her face.

She had changed after the fire. Not that much but it was still really…awkward to see her like that. With out her hat, her mask, I was able to see the difference.

Her rose colored hair that was shoulder length was now at her ears, they had to cut it from the neck length that it was at when she got out of the fire. Her china-blue eyes had red veins visible due to the IV's medication. Her paper white skin now had burn marks in random places, one on her palm looked suspiciously like the doorknob to the lab. But then I noticed something odd about the left foot.

Yes I know that it was in a cast. But something about it's shape wasn't quite right, quite natural. I tried to figure it out. What was wrong with it. I stared at it for some time, as if thinking that looking at the thing would bring me the answer.

"You'll never get it." My attention went to Cat's face as her's looked at mine. "You'll never guess in a hundred and one years what they've done." She said with disgust. I was nervous that I'd trigger another blast but I knew that she'd tell me anyway and it would happen. Better be prepared then unprepared.

"What did they do?" I braced my self as the words left my mouth.

She gritted her teeth and the "gaze of death" had appeared in her eyes (She often gave this look to the skool kids when they were being dumb, my dad when he called us insane, and recently Zim.).

"I'll tell you what they did." She said through her teeth. "They sawed OFF my FOOT and put a ROBOTIC one in its PLACE!"

"What?" I automatically said.

"That's right. You heard why they did it. I agree that I might have died if the foot had stayed but to put a machine it its place is just… AGGGGG!" she slammed her fist into the table again…only this time, the whole thing fell apart.

"They didn't even consider waiting for my input on adding something." She continued without noticing the damage she had just done. "I might have been in a coma but that doesn't mean that I was mentally absent! I could hear everything that was going on! They KNEW I could hear them!" She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. This was her method that calmed her down.

"I never wanted this to happen." She finally said. I must have looked confused, cuz she started to explain why.

"One of the many reasons why I hate Zim, is because he's basically attached to that machine on his back. It's apart of his body. From what I know, machines, in time, take over your life. And you can't do normal things without it. It can also make you power-hungry. If you're given a power….It's like they say "Those who have power seek to use it.", I've pictured Zim and his race of being controlled by that machine and to be called "Irken" by him, made me mad because…I don't want to be thought of being a minion of a computer. But now." She looked sadly at her foot.

I understood what she meant.

She was like Zim now.

She was comparable to a destroying, mindless, alien race.

But apparently that was only the surface of what she was saying.

"But anyway…" Her voice went back to normal, her smile had returned to her face. Somehow she had suddenly regained her glow.

"Thanks for the updates."

I got confused.

"Updates?"

"I told you that I could still hear everything even if I wasn't awake right? You HAVE been telling me what's been going on haven't you?"

"Oh!" I remembered what she said earlier about being able to hear people while she was in a coma. My could FEEL my face turned red, "Ummm." I stuttered out. "Welcome?"

Now, for those of you wondering why I was acting this way was because…Well, I'm a boy, she's a girl, we've been best friends since we were 7, she's saved my live and vice versa. It was REALLY strange for me when she was out.

Look at it this way,

Your best friend, the only friend you've got, who happens to be the opposite gender, is in a coma after loosing her/his family. You don't REALLY think they can hear you, but talking to them makes you feel better some how.

You're bound to let something slip right?

* * *

FLASHBA-

NO, NO FLASHBACKS! I'm embarrassed enough already. When I want to tell you what I said to her, I TELL YOU! But it's personal right now…. Plus, Gaz….I shudder at the thought of her reading about that part and using it as blackmail. Hey, Cat's tough, but right now, she's in a hospital. I'm defenseless. When it's safe, I PROMISE to tell you what I said.

* * *

Anyway

I panicked for a time period of, oh say, 3 seconds (Hey it felt like 3 HOURS to me!). What would she say? What would I do? I expected her to say ether

"Why do you think of me like that? I'm not JUST a girl you know. I'm a critical thinking, tough as steel, video game playing, and karate fighting, Jewish, 11-year-old. Can't you think of me as anything else but the STUPID STERIOTYPICAL CRYBABY FEMALE? HOLY FLY PAPER DIB! I THOUGHT YOU WERE BETTER THEN THAT!"

Or

"It was really awkward with what you said on the first day that I was in here. I know I was hurt and you knew that I really wasn't ok, but…what made you say that? Do you really mean it?"

But I differently wasn't expecting,

"I CAN'T BELEVE I MISSED ALL THAT!"

I jumped back in my chair as she yelled from where she sat and into my ears. Not expecting this explosion of emotion. (Hey, I'm a poet and I didn't even know it….Ok now I'm just being cheesy. Moving on.)

"FIRST THE THING WITH ZIM AND THE ORGANS! MAN! I WISH I COULD HAVE BEEN THERE! THEN WITH THE WATER BALLOONS! I hate to tell you Dib, but you brought that upon yourself by showing him it and taunting him. AND THEN WITH PARENT NIGHT! DUDE! AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE MOOSE THING! DUDE SERIOUSLY! A MOOSE? What is so terrifying about a MOOSE? AND HOW CAN YOU FORGET THAT CASE WHEN YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT TROUBLE TO GET THE SLIP SIGNED? MORE IMPORTANTLY, HOW MUCH TROUBLE CAN YOU GET INTO WITHOUT ME? WELL I NOW KNOW THE ANSWER! A LOT!"

I was officially confused.

I wasn't quite sure if she was angry with me, "trippin out" over all the stuff she missed, wowed of how useless I was with out her, or just glad to be able to talk again so all her emotions were over the top.

"Wha?" was the only thing that came out of my mouth.

"THIS is the EXPLOTION of adventure, the BURST of the paranormal findings, the CATICLISMIC BANG of un-Earthly events that we've been waiting, training, and preparing for!"

I was still confused, but something was started to come together in my head.

"Wha?"

She did that "Beetlejuice" look again before telling me what she was flipping out about.

"This is the kind of stuff we've been waiting for!" She said with ultimate force in her voice, "All this stuff happening with Zim! THIS is the thing that will change our lives."

She didn't need to continue (even though I knew she would anyway.), because I knew what she was talking about now.

"And I'm just not talking about OUR lives," She pointed to herself and myself, "I'm talking bout the PLANET'S life! Zim is here to take it over! He stinks at it yeah, but only because WE'RE here to make him stink! Without us, this place would be doomed!"

she paused

"Great now I sound like Ms. Bitters."

"Keeping going." I encouraged her. She needed to keep going, over the years when ever she did this kind of speech, she usually lead up to something that was significant and contained something that I didn't know. THIS was one of those speeches.

"We're the ones who must save the Earth…" the look of leadership vanished in a flash and was replaced with the face of a frightened 7 year old.

What just happened?

"Cat?" I touched her shoulder to make sure she was ok, "Are you alright?"

She glanced at me with those blood red eyes that we not like her's at all. The medication had made her look like an entirely different person up close. It scared me for a second.

"Zim came by." She whispered "Just before I was able to move."

My brain panicked

"WHAT?!" I jumped up out of the chair with bug-eyes and racing heart. "What did he do to her?" I thought

"Sit down" she told me "I'll explain."

I reluctantly sat down. I wanted to get Zim at that point. "Visiting" her when she couldn't even open her eyes. She was defenseless, what if he did something to her? What if he was the reason she looked like this? What if she was dying and didn't even know about it?

"He just came in." She assured me "He was the only one who knew that I was mentally awake. He's the one, or the REASON why I'm out of a coma."

"What?"

I was confused again.

Cat just shrugged

"He said that it was payment from saving him from the lunch special 2 weeks ago. He said that the moment he analyzed it with his computer, the data showed that it would have done something much worse then kill him."

"What would it have done?" I asked with curiosity. What horrible end would the scalely alien be so afraid of that he would thank the enemy that saved him from it?

"It would have caused such a powerful reaction with his cellular DNA that it would have created a chemical explosion with a blast to match a super-nova."

I froze in both body and mind.

"What?" I wanted to make sure I heard her right.

"Let me put it more clear, it would have caused him to explode and wipe out all of Earth, planet and all, and every other planet with in (You're gonna get a kick out of this.) 9,998,838,750,000 (9 trillion, 9 hundred 98 billion, 8 hundred 38 million, 7 hundred 50 thousand) miles from our planet. Meaning the blast radius stops at about the Orion star constellation."

I got the "kick" out of the number yes. I also thought of what an odd coincidence it was, where it ended, but what I was really startled about was:

Cat's kindness to our enemy had just saved us all.

And what was stranger was that he helped her out of a coma!

"He HELPED you out of a coma?" I asked her in awe.

"To talk to me about something." She said with disgust hanging from her voice.

"He said that his leaders didn't want anything bad happening to me. So he was ordered to wake me up." She looked at me sternly "Do you know what this means?"

I was, and still am, in disbelief at this piece of news.

"The Irken leaders, are watching you?"

"More like have an interest in me." She spat out. "From what I know about Zim, they're probably concerned about my intelligence and planning. Not that they don't think you as a threat, I'm just saying what I think is logical from what I've put together. Because, he only woke me up today, meaning-"

"Meaning" I finished "That he only got the order today."

She snapped her fingers to a pointing position at me "Very good."

I beamed.

I know that sounds corny but how do you feel when you get praise for doing something good on your own? I don't get that too often. Remember, no one but Cat really cares about me and what I think.

"It also means that Zim doesn't really care about me as much, he told the truth about the super-nova though. But that wasn't the real reason why he woke me up. When he said "My Tallest will be pleased that you're up." I knew what was really going on."

I smirked. Zim might have the Technology, but Earth's got the Brains. And the "Tallests" test subject. Meaning that Zim couldn't hurt her! SHE WAS INVINCIBLE!

"They wouldn't help you out though if you were in the same position." She winced

I wasn't surprised.

"You weren't that successful in exposing Zim or the Empire, so they wouldn't think of you as much of a threat as I did. Not that I'm not trying to sound like I'm better!"

"It's ok." I said, "To tell the truth, I wouldn't want to be a lab rat for an alien race." I stopped. "Ok that sounded wrong."

"It did but it's the truth. And I can't yell at you about the truth." She smiled.

"Oh." She suddenly exclaimed

"And!" She bent down on the other side of the bed and picked up,

"Dwicky?" In Cat's arms was her beloved, orange tabby cat.

I was officially lost now.

Zim had also saved Cat's cat?

Was apart of his orders?

"Well actually, that little stupid, but nice, robot called GIR gave THAT to me."

Ok, let me restate myself,

GIR, the crazy, taco loving, robot-servant of Zim had saved Dwicky.

"GIR said that it was a present for creating the "Angry Monkey Show". So I think that my Dad was right about that paying off!"

Cat's face fell faster then a meteor.

Without warning, Cat broke down.

Her head nuzzled up against Dwicky's fur and buried her face into it. Her very appearance seemed to weaken.

"Oh Cat. I'm sorry." I said as I heard her begin to cry.

That was really the only thing I could say.

It was an emotion that I couldn't explain. It's a common one for this situation but with out experiencing it, you just can't understand.

It was one of those moments where you couldn't even describe it.

Words were meaningless.

"That morning two weeks ago," came a shaky voice that I couldn't even recognize "I had it all pictured in my head. What it would be from then on. What me and my Dad would be like. No more endless days of not seeing each other, but multiple days in a row where it would be just the two of us, doing what we wanted to do with out worrying about work or school."

I could tell that she was really struggling with not crying while she was talking. After all, she had to look strong and brave all her life. To look week would mean that she was vulnerable.

"I pictured us," She continued, her head out of Dwicky's fur staring past me with tearful eyes to the window "going to that parent-teacher night. Him actually being there like a parent should, instead of being on the broadcast. Being to busy for his kid. I also thought of him being there at my Bat Mitzvah in March on my 12th birthday reading from the Torah in perfect Hebrew, being so proud of me. And actually going on vacations like normal families. We were even discussing going to Italy this summer."

I was really sad for her now.

"Now I've got no one. And no place to go." She sobbed into Dwicky's fur again, this time not holding her tears back, not being ashamed to miss her father.

I didn't know what to do to comfort her. I wasn't good at these things. I was going to tap her on the shoulder and just say….I didn't know what I was going to say.

But on my own, I reached out my hand once again, close to her.

But something else happened.

The moment my hand touched her, she abandoned Dwicky,

And fell sobbing into my arms.

"WHAT WILL I DO?" She cried into my shoulder, "THIS STUPID FOOT REQUIRES A LOT OF MONEY TO KEEP UP! WHERE WILL I GO NOW THAT I DON'T HAVE A HOME!? WILL I BE SENT TO SOME FOSTER CARE WHERE I'LL BE PUT INTO SOME GUY'S CARE THAT BEETS ME AND HATES ME? WILL I GO AWAY FROM THIS CITY? AWAY FROM YOU? WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME NOW THAT DAD'S DEAD?!"

I couldn't even register it in my brain. It was like Zim had entered it again and put all activity on hold. "This couldn't be happening." I thought to myself. "This isn't the Cat that I know." I thought about telling her that.

Because I knew that she would kick herself later for this. But I didn't.

I knew that this was nothing to feel regret about later. She doesn't need to feel bad about needing to cry about her Dad's death. She, like everyone else, had the right to express what she felt.

Even if it went against the definition of her own identity.

But then again.

Having the power to express ourselves through emotion is what makes us different from the Irkens.

I thought about this as I held her in my arms, when it finally caught up with me that this WAS my friend and she WAS crying over the death of her father, and so I kept holding her,

As if holding her in my arms would make it seem like a bad dream that she would wake up from any moment.

* * *

After that, Dad came in and told Cat about her Dad's Will. It said that she was to be Dr Jo Membrain's Apprentice for a time period of 3 weeks. Just to wrap up the last things to do on the late Professor's list. (She said that it was ironic. I still don't know why, so a cookie to who ever can figure it out.) She reluctantly agreed to the terms, knowing that the Will was created before that "connection".

It also said that afterwards, Dad (mine) would be her guardian and that the property would belong to her. She at once asked if the house could be rebuilt. Lab and all.

Then my Dad said something strange.

"The Lab hasn't been destroyed."

We both looked at each other.

Funny.

The report on what caused the fire said that it had started in the Lab, from a chemical mess.

But we all know that there were no chemicals in the lab now where there?

**

* * *

**

**(GadgetCid's Notes) All right! Let's give it up for DIB! (Applause please) And Dib IS serious about that cookie by the way. Sorry about the late update, it took me ages to get Dib to write this. He had a rough start, not the best writer in the world, but who isn't?**

**THIS IS A NON-FLAMETHROWER SECTION! PLEASE USE YOUR FLAMETHROWERS IN A LESS FLAMABLE COMPARTMENT!**

**THANK YOU!**

**-GadgetCid**


End file.
